No Middle Choice: It's hard to stay moderate when the choices are so extreme. Bush is too far to the right for my taste. His opposition to abortion, stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage is infuriating.

Then I look at the Democrats, and I just want to cry. We're in the middle of a complex and dangerous war against terrorism, and the Democrats are undermining our efforts every step of the way. President Bush is trying to fight the terrorists. The Democrats are trying to fight President Bush.

That's not to say that we should march in lock step behind our government. But with so much on the line, we should be intelligent about our criticisms. People actually think Bush lied about WMD to start an irrelevant war to benefit his daddy or Halliburton. Such accusations are just plain ridiculous and have been disproven time and time again.

The mud slinging could be dismissed as politics as usual if it weren't for what's at stake here. Liberals are endangering the U.S. by weakening the doctrine of pre-emption. It will be difficult for Bush, Kerry, or any other president to threaten a pre-emptive strike against a hostile nation simply because of the excess scrutiny the Iraq invasion has endured.

This gives terrorist-supporting nations a buffer in which they can harbor terrorists and develop illicit weapons programs to a certain extent, so long as they don't do anything obviously over the top. Hell, all they have to do is claim they'll work with the United Nations, as Saddam Hussein claimed to do, and the Left will automatically side with the hostile state and against the United States, no matter what atrocities our enemies are currently up to.

Kerry is trying to sound tougher now that we're in the general election, and that's an improvement. But the Democratic Party still seems to be run by the likes of Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore, and the MoveOn.org people, all of whom had a prominent spot at the Democratic National Convention. Kerry tries to take the high road while letting his minions preach hate.

But because Kerry isn't distancing himself from the fringe, I can't help but wonder how much of an influence they'll be if he wins the presidency. A President Kerry may know that we have to use force in a certain situation, but I'm afraid he'll cower to the pressures from the Left.